I Dissed Jeremy Irons

Jeremy Irons, My Almost-FriendI have a confession to make.

I dissed Jeremy Irons. I know, I know. It is very uncool to diss a major celebrity who acts in strange and interesting films. There is very little I can say to justify it and it was a brief moment in time.

I was young and in South Korea. My friends and I were the only white faces in a sea of perhaps 3,000 South Koreans attending the Pusan International Film Festival and he was on stage talking about his film, "Chinese Box" which proceeded "The Blair Witch Project" in unusual camera work. He raised his sunglasses, which may or may not have been Oakley's and nodded at us with a big smile.

We ducked. What could we do? We were young, we weren't really sure exactly who he was (he was introduced in Korean and then in English by someone with an accent we were unfamiliar with), and surprisingly and embarrassingly, we were extremely shy.

He looked at us again and we did what anyone else that young and stupid would have done. We walked away.

That moment is one of the only things I regret in my life. As some of the only "foreigners" around, we could have perhaps partied with him. Maybe we could have even got him drunk enough to go to a Karaoke Room with us. At the very least, we could have gotten personalized autographs from him: "Hang Loose, Love, Jeremy".